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Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Gluten-Free Baking 101: How to Customize Your Own Recipe for Gluten-Free Cookies

Quick. What's your favorite cookie?

Chocolate chip?

Double chocolate?

Straight up sugar cookies?

I don't discriminate. I like them all.

Which is why I want to teach you today how to make your OWN recipe for gluten-free cookies. What I'm giving you here is a basic recipe to follow, an outline if you will. I did the same for gluten-free, vegan waffles and pancakes, and that recipe has probably been used more times than all my other recipes combined. It's not just because it's good. It's because it's simple and gives you, the reader, control over the ingredients you want to use.

Let's start. Here's the recipe. Below the recipe, you'll find notes on each ingredient and what you can use:

My mom's latest batch, following my guidelines

Make Your Own Gluten-Free CookiesThis recipe is designed to be foolproof. You can take this general recipe and customize it as you like. Read the whole post as it contains information on what ingredients can be used.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Set out 2 cookie sheets. You can
grease them, but I find it's generally not necessary with these cookies. (Depending on what ingredients you use, the number of cookies you end up with will change, but expect to make around 12-16 cookies.)

Whisk together the flour, sugar, baking
powder, and salt in a large bowl. Add the puree, fat, and extract. Stir until completely mixed.

Stir in the add-ins if using.

Roll heaping tablespoons of dough into balls and flatten slightly. Depending on what ingredients you use, your dough may be stickier
and you will not be able to roll it into balls. In that case, just drop
the dough onto the cookie sheets as you would any other drop cookies.
Those will spread slightly.

Bake for approximately 12 minutes, checking after 10 minutes. Let cool on the cookie sheet for a few minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.

What can you use for the above ingredients? 1 1/3 cups gluten-free flour

1 1/3 cups all-purpose gluten-free flour (without xanthan gum) OR

1 cup flour (brown rice, garbanzo bean, sorghum, teff, buckwheat,
millet, or quinoa) + 1/3 cup starch (potato, arrowroot, tapioca, or
cornstarch) - in this case, you can use 1 cup of just one flour (i.e. 1
cup brown rice flour + 1/3 cup tapioca starch) or you can mix a bunch of
flours together, equaling 1 cup. Sometimes I just take out all my bags
of flour and add a few tablespoons of each until I reach 1 cup, then I
add my 1/3 cup of starch OR

I deliberately left a few flours off this list. Almond flour and
coconut flour require too many changes, so see the link above. I don't
like the flavor amaranth flour gives to cookies, so I left it out. I
haven't baked with oat flour before, so I also left that out. White rice flour tends to make them too chewy, a bit like mochi, and rather bland.

2/3 cup granulated sugar

Cane sugar, Sucanat, brown sugar

Coconut palm sugar, xylitol, erythritol

Any other granulated sugar

6 tablespoons puree

Pureed fruit (i.e. applesauce, pureed pear, pureed banana)

Pureed sweet potato, pumpkin or other winter squash (these should be cooked before pureeing)

6 tablespoons liquid fat

Oil (grapeseed, canola, olive)

Melted butter

Melted coconut oil

Melted Earth Balance

1/2 teaspoon extract

Pure vanilla extract

Any other extract for a different flavor (almond, orange, etc.)

2/3 cup (optional) add-ins

Chocolate chips

Chopped nuts

Chopped dried fruit or raisins

Coconut flakes

Sesame seeds

Have fun!

How to add protein to your cookies:
For vegans, you can add
chopped nuts or seeds to your batter. For
non-vegans, eggs are a great way to increase the protein in your
cookies:

Add 1 large egg with your wet ingredients. Cut the puree
down from 6 tablespoons to 2 tablespoons. Cut the baking powder down
from 1 teaspoon to 1/2 teaspoon.

oh boy, these r good. I used teff and chickpea flour, with tapioca starch. Then used 3 tbsp. of puree banana and 3 tbsp. of unsweetened applesauce. only use 1/3c of coconut sugar and unsweetened shredded coconut with raw pumpkin seeds and raw sunflower seeds. They are beautiful.

I've tried to Pin this post and it won't let me because there's no image that uploads with it. Don't know if that's something you can fix on your end...or if that's something I'm supposed to do?? Just thought I'd let you know. Maybe you could Pin it, so it could spread that way too!

Yum! I just tried this recipe with teff and sorghum flour rand tapioca starch. I added cashews and coconut with cinnamon and vanilla for flavor. I would cut back on the sugar. I only used 1/2 cup but with puréed banana that was a little sweet. I'll definitely make this again soon.

Ahhhh beauty, you're a GEM! This stroke of brilliance is akin to a powerfully bright lighthouse in a dark& stormy sea. I've been in a state of MISERY since the gluten issue in my life & so so so desiring just the simple comfort of a COOKIE...one stinkin COOKIE that doesnt cost three/four dollars and taste like cardboard. THANK YOU...this'll be, my secret GO TO for EVER!! Love love love your writings by the way :)